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Method and system for remote collaboration

Method and system for remote collaboration description/claims

This application claims benefit of and priority to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/867,066, filed Nov. 22, 2006. The entire disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference.

1. Field of the Invention

This invention relates generally to remote collaboration methods and systems, and more specifically to an improved method and system for remote collaboration when interacting with images.

2. Description of the Related Art

In medicine, when reviewing data associated with a patient, often multiple health care professionals will review data in order to formulate an accurate assessment of the patient's health. Where multiple people are involved in the analysis of data, the data is generally provided to multiple people at different times so that they may review the data and formulate an opinion. When dealing with medical images, health professionals typically review such medical images, provide their remarks, and provide the medical image to the next person for review.

With the advent of electronic medical image retrieval systems, health professionals are able to access medical images from selected work stations. Where collaboration is required, often the health professionals will review the medical images electronically and provide their remarks in an electronic format that allows for access to the next health professional. Alternatively, where multiple health professionals are required to review medical images, the health professionals may attempt to gather in one place and view the medical image at the same time, so that their experiences and comments may be shared with one another.

However, as health professionals, due to reasons of time and proximity, may not be able to gather in one place, methods and systems have been proposed that allow for remote collaboration where the respective health professionals engage in a collaboration session where they access the medical image that is resident upon a remote device. The collaboration session allows one or more users to engage with the medical image and perform manipulations and transformations of the image that are then shown to the other health professionals upon their respective stations.

When health professionals engage in an interactive collaboration session, one of the major limitations is the processing speed associated with the workstations that are engaging in the collaboration session. At the workstation level, slower processors can cause some users to lag behind others with respect to the ability to view an accurate representation of a medical image that is being manipulated by another user. If the view of a medical image that is being shown to a user begins to lag, the collaboration session becomes inefficient as some users are not able to participate effectively.

The embodiments described herein provide in one aspect a collaboration method wherein a first workstation participates in a collaboration session with one or more other workstations, said method comprising: (a) receiving a first event message at the first workstation wherein the first event message comprises information regarding an interaction with a displayed image at the one or more other workstations; (b) analyzing the first event message to determine whether the interaction is to be executed at the first workstation upon a representation of the displayed image; (c) if (b) is true, executing the interaction upon the representation of the displayed image; and (d) if (b) is false, skipping executing the interaction upon the representation of the displayed image and receiving a second event message and analyzing the second event message.

The embodiments described herein provide in another aspect a collaboration method wherein a first workstation participates in a collaboration session with one or more other workstations, said method comprising: (a) receiving a first event message at a relay server wherein the first event message comprises information regarding an interaction with a displayed image at the one or more other workstations; (b) analyzing the first event message to determine whether the interaction is to be executed at the first workstation upon a representation of the displayed image; (c) if (b) is true, executing the interaction upon the representation of the displayed image at the first workstation; and (d) if (b) is false, skipping executing the interaction upon the representation of the displayed image and receiving a second event message at the image server and analyzing the second event message.

The embodiments described herein provide in another aspect a collaboration system having a first workstation that participates in a collaboration session with one or more other workstations, the system comprising: (a) a memory for storing a plurality of instructions; and (b) a processor coupled to the memory, said processor configured for: (i) receiving a first event message wherein the first event message comprises information regarding an interaction with a displayed image at the one or more other workstations; (ii) analyzing the first event message to determine whether the interaction is to be executed at the first workstation upon a representation of the displayed image; (iii) if (ii) is true, executing the interaction upon the representation of the displayed image; and (iv) if (ii) is false, skipping executing the interaction upon the representation of the displayed image and receiving a second event message and analyzing the second event message.

Further aspects and advantages of the embodiments described will appear from the following description taken together with the accompanying drawings.

For a better understanding of the embodiments described herein and to show more clearly how they may be carried into effect, reference will now be made, by way of example only, to the accompanying drawings which show at least one exemplary embodiment, and in which:

FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an exemplary embodiment of a collaboration system;

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